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Premium video content for our Spaceflight Now Plus subscribers.Mounted atop Atlas 5After reaching Lockheed Martin's Vertical Integration Facility following the early morning drive across the Cape, a crane lifts the New Horizons spacecraft into the 30-story building for mounting atop the awaiting Atlas 5 vehicle.Play videoLeaving the hangarThe New Horizons spacecraft, mounted atop a special transporter, departs Kennedy Space Center's Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility after spending three months in the building undergoing testing, final closeouts, filling of its hydrazine fuel, mating with the third stage kick motor and spin-balance checks. The probe was driven to the Atlas 5 rocket's assembly building at Complex 41 for mating with the launcher.Play videoMission logoWith New Horizons enclosed within the Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 rocket's nose cone, a large decal reading: "New Horizons: Pluto-Kuiper Belt Mission" is applied to the payload fairing.Play videoNose cone encapsulationThe New Horizons is packed away for its launch to Pluto as workers slide the two-piece Atlas 5 rocket nose cone around the spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility. The Swiss-made shroud protects the spacecraft during ascent through Earth's atmosphere.Play videoScience of New HorizonsThe first robotic space mission to visit the distant planet Pluto and frozen objects in the Kuiper Belt is explained by the project's managers and scientists in this NASA news conference from the agency's Washington headquarters on Dec. 19.Dial-up | BroadbandBecome a subscriberMore video

New Horizons launches on voyage to Pluto and beyondBY WILLIAM HARWOODSTORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSIONPosted: January 19, 2006; Updated after post-launch press conference

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. (CBS) - A supercharged Atlas 5 rocket carrying NASA's Pluto-bound New Horizons probe roared to life and dashed away from Earth today on a record-setting three-billion-mile voyage to the frigid edge of the solar system.

Breaking away from Earth's gravity at a record-setting 10.07 miles per
second - 36,256 mph - the nuclear-powered robotic spacecraft was expected to
cross the moon's orbit just nine hours after liftoff and to reach Jupiter
for a velocity boosting flyby in just 13 months.
Additional coverage for subscribers:VIDEO:
LIFTOFF OF NEW HORIZONS! SHORT | LONGERVIDEO:
LAUNCH AS SEEN FROM THE PRESS SITE PLAYVIDEO:
UCS-15 TRACKING CAMERA VIEW OF LAUNCH PLAYVIDEO:
CAMERA ANGLE FROM ATOP ROOF OF THE VAB PLAYVIDEO:
ALL FIVE SOLID ROCKET BOOSTERS JETTISON PLAYVIDEO:
NEW HORIZONS IS DEPLOYED FROM THIRD STAGE PLAYVIDEO:
POST-FLIGHT INTERVIEW WITH NASA LAUNCH MANAGER PLAYVIDEO:
WATCH POST-LAUNCH NEWS BRIEFING DIAL-UP | BROADBANDAUDIO:
LISTEN TO THE NEWS CONFERENCE FOR iPODVIDEO:
NARRATED FOOTAGE OF ATLAS 5'S LAUNCH CAMPAIGN PLAYVIDEO:
NARRATED FOOTAGE OF NEW HORIZON'S CAMPAIGN PLAYVIDEO:
TUESDAY'S LAUNCH ATTEMPT IS SCRUBBED PLAYSUBSCRIBE NOW
Coasting through space at least 100 times faster than a commercial
jetliner throughout its one-way voyage, it will still take New Horizons nine
years to reach the most famous member of the Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy
debris left over from the birth of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.

"We got the launch off at two o'clock Eastern Time and at 2:50, from
Canberra in Australia, we received the first signals from the New Horizons
spacecraft and the telemetry all indicates that every system is 'go,'" said
project manager Glen Fountain. "All the systems on the spacecraft are what
we call in the business, they're green. They're in good shape."

Noting the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition to the West
Coast, Fountain said "the words of Captain Clark, when he and his expedition
arrived at the Pacific Ocean, were very appropriate. He said, 'Oh the joy.
Ocean in view.' Well, it's oh the joy! New Horizons is safely on its way."

Carrying the ashes of Pluto's discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, New Horizons
will race by the frozen planet July 14, 2015, passing within 5,500 miles of
the icy, 1,460-mile-wide planet at 31,300 mph. Fourteen minutes later, the
spacecraft will pass by Charon at a distance of 16,800 miles.

At Pluto's enormous distance from Earth - so far it will take light some
4.5 hours to cross the gulf - it will take days to transmit even a few
high-priority images back to Earth. The spacecraft will need nine months to
transmit the complete data set.

But that data, the goal of the $700 million mission, will mark a
milestone in the history of space exploration as New Horizons scientifically
unveils the only "planet" - and some argue about that designation - in the
solar system that has not yet visited by humans or robotic spacecraft.

"This is, in a very real sense, the capstone of the initial
reconnaissance of the planets that the United States has led for the world
since the 1960s," said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator at
the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.

"We're going farther to reach our target and we're travelling faster than
any spacecraft ever has. This is a little bit about leadership, a little bit
about re-writing the textbooks about the outer planets. But I also want to
point out it's also about inspiring the next generation of scientists and
explorers, who we hope will take us to even greater heights."

Said project scientist Hal Weaver: "New Horizons is the first mission to
the last planet. It's going to perform a detailed reconnaissance of Pluto
and its companion, Charon. We're actually not going to stop there. We're
going to continue to fly past Pluto deep into the Kuiper Belt. New Horizons
is going to be going where no other mission has ever been, so it truly is a
mission of exploration and discovery."

Pluto was discovered in 1930 by Tombaugh, who died in 1997 at age 90. His
93-year-old wife, Patricia, attended today's launching, along with her
daughter and son in law. Asked Sunday what her husband would say about the
current debate over whether Pluto is a bona fide planet, Patricia Tombaugh
said, 'you know what he'd say in frustration? 'It's there. So we're going
there to see what's there.'"

Today, Stern announced that a portion of Tombaugh's ashes was on board
the New Horizons spacecraft.

"My husband would be 100 on Jan. 4. So it's a nice time to have it go
there," said Patricia. "He would be so happy and so interested in all this,
you know, because it was his thing."

To launch the 1,054-pound New Horizons with enough speed to find out
"what's there"in a reasonable amount of time, NASA bought a Lockheed Martin
Atlas 5 heavy-lift booster equipped with five strap-on solid-fuel boosters
generating a combined 2.5 million pounds of thrust.

The 20-story rocket was rolled to its launch pad at the Cape Canaveral
Air Force Station early Monday, but a launch try Tuesday was called off due
to high winds and a second attempt Wednesday ended when storms in Maryland
knocked out power to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory spacecraft
control center.

But today, after extending a final "hold" nearly an hour to let low
clouds thin out, the the Atlas 5 roared to life at 2 p.m. and climbed above
its launch gantry in less than six seconds - twice as fast as normal.

Climbing vertically atop a trail of incandescent flame for the first few
seconds, the Atlas 5 accelerated through the sound barrier about 45 seconds
after liftoff and quickly arced East over the Atlantic Ocean through a
partly cloudy sky. The solid rocket motors burned out about a minute and a
half into flight, falling back to Earth trailing white contrails, while the
Atlas continued its ascent atop a tongue of orange flame from its
Russian-built RD-180 engine.

The first stage engine shut down and fell away four-and-a-half minutes
after launch followed seconds later by the ignition of a hydrogen-fueled
Centaur second stage. In the first of two "burns," the Centaur boosted New
Horizons into a so-called parking orbit with a low point, or perigee, of
about 101 miles and a high point, or apogee, of around 132 miles. After a
20-minute coast, the Centaur reignited, pushing New Horizons out of Earth
orbit and into an orbit around the sun that, if nothing else was done, would
only carry the craft as far as the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

To get the kick needed to reach Jupiter and the outer solar system, New
Horizons relied on a Star 48B solid-fuel motor that accelerated the small
spacecraft to a departure velocity of some 10 miles per second, on course
for a flyby of Jupiter in late February 2007.

"This is the 60th anniversary or thereabouts of a trip that had the speed
record from the East Coast to the West Coast, that Howard Hughes did,"
Fountain said. "Well, this spacecraaft would get from the East Coast to the
West Coast in five minutes. So that's the kind of speed that we're enjoying
as we go out. And yet, nine-and-a-half years to get to Pluto. That gives you
a sense of the distance to be travelled."

Flight controllers at the Applied Physics Laboratory plan to carry out
two trajectory correction maneuvers over the next 20 days to fine tune New
Horizons' path to Jupiter. The probe's half-dozen instruments will be
activated and checked out this summer and the Jupiter flyby science campaign
will commence this Fall.

To carry out its mission, New Horizons must traverse some 3 billion miles
and then hit a keyhole in space just 186 miles across, a target point at the
far end of the launch trajectory that will allow the spacecraft to pass
midway between Pluto and Charon.

Detailed observations will begin about five months before the flyby,
collecting data that will help flight planners fine-tune the spacecraft's
course. Starting about three months out, at a distance of about 62 million
miles, New Horizons will begin mapping Pluto and Charon. A few weeks later,
the spacecraft's images will become sharper than those taken by the Hubble
Space Telescope. Daily observations will commence one month before the
encounter.

By that point, scientists hope to know whether two recently discovered
moons - and others that may be discovered between now and then - have
contributed to any as-yet-unseen rings of debris around Pluto that could
pose a threat to the spacecraft as it zips through the system. Stern said
New Horizons should still have half a tank of hydrazine rocket fuel left by
then, more than enough to change course if necessary to avoid any threats.

New Horizons' close encounter with Pluto will last a full day, 12 hours
before and after. The spacecraft cannot enter orbit around the planet
because no current rocket can launch a probe carrying enough fuel to arrest
the velocity needed to get it there in a reasonable amount of time.

Asked about the value of the New Horizons mission to the average
taxpayer, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said "I would ask the question
of you what value to you do you think it might be to be able to examine the
primordial constituents from which the solar system and all the planets and
we ourselves were formed? Because it is believed the Kuiper Belt contains
the remnant objects from the formation of the solar system that never
coalesced into planets, or mostly didn't coalesce into planets, because they
were simply too far out.

"I can't predict, I'm not smart enough or skilled enough to be able to
predict what that value might be. But it is fantastically interesting to me
to have a chance, maybe within my lifetime, for scientists to see up close
what those objects look like and to begin our reconnaissance of that region
of space."

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